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How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of Face Masks

90 points by ardy42 7y ago

saiya-jin 7y ago
I thought this was about Switzerland... Just an opinion on a country that usually is ahead of others in smart decisions - they have almost 0 medical manufacturing here, and in past weeks were/are progressively getting screwed by ie Germany stopping trucks full of face masks and medical equipment at the border and forbidding them to come here. Outsourcing is not an issue only in US. Also, people in government responsible for raising alerts, closures etc. voted 2:1 to not do quarantine when Italy was already exploding with cases (mind you, regions super close to Suisse!). Why? Effin' economical concerns, meaning businesses stronghanding (probably corrupt) politicians to keep things running. So while people were already dying en masse 50km south from here, all the shops, restaurants and caffees were chock full of common folks were acting like nothing is going on. Somebody didn't realize that it will take much longer to get economy back afterwards... Hospitals desperately unprepared with equipment. Doctors working with plain stupid paper/cloth masks on emergencies, not having them swapped often. Leaving schools open for way too long. I could go on... I expected more from this country. I really did. Quick removal of any workers protection laws for doctors. I personally know few doctors that are already sick with Covid here, mainly because system fucked them hard with lack of equipment, and they are properly disappointed, desperate and furious. So don't be harsh on US government, I think basically almost all governments screwed up badly.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  This is the part that annoys me. Most people would agree that this particular virus presents a threat that should be addressed in a way that bypassed day to day considerations. But that is not the case. In US, the president openly says if it hurts economy too bad, we might as well roll the dice and see what happens. Very annoying given that the advice is likely coming from people who can cloister themselves if needed. Why does everything has to be calculated in terms of the dollar? Hell, a month ago poster here was advocating killong off bat a species to save 2T in imaginary assets. It feels like I am going on a rant here, so I apologize. The past few days have been bananas.
  - m23khan 7y ago
    hang in there friend, we are all in this Together.
- Rochus 7y ago
  > they have almost 0 medical manufacturing here Well, that must be a very big zero. Have you ever heard of companies like Roche, Tecan, Hamilton or Ypsomed (just to name a few)?
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Yeah, do your due diligence. All there is here are HQs with upper management, just enough to tax corporations here, and often some research. Manufacturing - almost zero, zilch, none. And if there is something, it can't manufacture anything without all parts supplied from outside (cheaper) countries. Of-topic a bit, but you know that 'swiss' army knives (victorinox, wenger) are manufactured piece by piece in Germany/Austria, and only final assembly is done en Suisse? Just enough work to pass the criteria to get the stamp 'swiss made', not a nanometer more. I understand it from cold corporate logic, it really minimizes the costs and they ask for premium price nevertheless due to that swiss tag. But as we see now, this approach hits the wall hard in certain, very real scenarios. At least they kept the milk industry with long term subsidies afloat. Go talk to Swiss doctors if you care, ideally in cantonal hospitals that will take most of the sick. Most of our friends are doctors in the biggest one in whole country, quite a few in emergencies. You will hear stories... None of the stuff I mention is in mainstream media, all act like all is under control from day 0. Talk about independent journalism.
    - Rochus 7y ago
      Well, I am Swiss and I consult some of the mentioned companies. These companies do most of their F&E in Switzerland and also some manufacturing. It's in no way just management. And Victorinox does manufacturing in Ibach and it's one of the most popular employers in Europe.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  All screw up, but some screw up more persistently then others. What it clearly demoinstrates is that our socio-economic systems of choice clearly do not incentivize providing proper care for the people it is meant to serve. Some still act as if this was an unforeseen event. All of this was predicted years ago after the previous SARS outbreak and well documented by the scientific community, yet governments worldwide turned a blind eye. My own 'health' minister even went as far as destroying the strategic stockpile of FFP2 masks (yes, actually destroyed as they went over their 'best used before' , not that that turns them useless overnight) then aggressively 'saved' on all social and healthcare programs and decided not to refill the strategic stockpile. Her latest blunder: panic ordering a contingent of masks from some dodgy north-African dealer without doing any due diligence, and of course in the process not only getting conned out of 3.5 million euros, but having hospital staff waiting another week on adequate protection. It boggles the mind.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Maybe I didn't express myself properly at the end - I meant be pissed off, I sure as hell am, but these massive failures that will cost many lives can be found everywhere. I really did expect more, not strictly from politicians (they should just listen when SHTF), but many 'experts' with influential roles in government. In strictly just society, those with powers for this situation should be judged afterwards for their effectiveness, or lack of it. I wonder if we will see this in some form somewhere
cryoshon 7y ago
framing the US as the world's "richest country" is a disservice here. a few people are very rich, and many people are well off. but the institutions of this country are, despite being the product of the "richest country", entirely poor and weak. public institutions have been hollowed out by decades of intentional neglect and austerity. the CDC has no help to offer hospitals in need and is still like a deer in headlights, months into the crisis. before their weakness was exposed, the national stockpile was mostly empty. the cracks in the system were never filled, and many were barely papered over. private institutions have been optimized to extract profits rather than to serve their stated social purpose. hospitals are now on the brink of going out of business and closing down as the pandemic starts to ramp up. their readiness was low beforehand, too, as there's no money to be made in being prepared for a public health emergency. so, how did the world's richest country run out of face masks? easy: we organized our society around the idea that buying them and keeping them around was too expensive to bother with.
- danans 7y ago
  I've been thinking along the same lines, that our lack of public preparedness for this is reflected in concentration of returns to capital at the top of the wealth distribution. But that said, there are things the US stockpiles: corn, petroleum, and weapons.
  - quietthrow 7y ago
    We over index on preparedness for war. Bill gates has a great ted talk on this who basically called this corona virus situation a few years ago. https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re... When I look at the whole situation it looks like a bunch of meatheads whose answer to everything is brawn and military superiority.
    - throwaway32120 7y ago
      And like most things in America, the military costs much more than other countries and does much less for its citizens. A good example is what happened when Yemen fell apart: China used its military to evacuate Chinese citizens[1], India used its military to evacuate its citizens[2], and the US told its citizens that they were on their own[3]. The American embassy even told Americans trapped in Yemen that they should seek out the help of India in order to get out of the country[4]. It's hard to escape the notion that for decades America has suffered under a political class that's been a mix of incompetent, self-serving, and uncaring. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32173811 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32173811 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat [3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/21/washington-to-americans-stuck-in-yemen-youre-on-your-own-evacuation/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/21/washington-to-americans... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/08/india-leads-rescue-of-foreign-nationals-including-americans-trapped-in-yemen/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/08...
watertom 7y ago
All this article highlights is that you can't run the government as a business. The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's. I ran Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for a very large Financial Institution. I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever." A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN. Yes, we all knew this could happen, but there was no way to predict when it would happen. Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen. Frankly running DR & BC wrecked my career at that firm because I was seen as Don Quixote, "Tilting at Windmills." I was assigned the job and did my best, assuming it was a stepping stone, and it was, but they expected me to just put on a show. Instead I took the job seriously, and it eroded their confidence in me, they expected that I should have recognized it as a fluff job, used only to get me exposure to the BOD, justifying the next step up in my career, instead I was "sent down" and had no choice but to leave.
- fma 7y ago
  Agreed. Was thinking how our Internet infrastructure has built in redundancy, chaos monkey for services, etc... Engineers understand that things can and will fail. If we build the Internet like the "just in time" supply chain - we'd all be screwed. What's also sad is that people could see in January that this would be a global issue. Domestic production should have ramped up - at least buy us more time, translating to more flattening of the curve, less deaths...
  - watertom 7y ago
    It's even bigger than that. We should be looking at strategic sourcing, just like we do with oil. Not all manufacturing should be allowed offshore. The SEC evaluates mergers, as part of HomeLand Security we need offshoring evaluated. If you want to move your rubber dog bone production offshore, or if an industry wants to move ALL rubber dog bone production offshore, go for it. Critical items like ventilators. NOPE. Or Computing equipment, NOPE. There needs to be a list.
m23khan 7y ago
If you look at entire known Human history, pandemics, epidemics, wars, famines, droughts and troubled economic times feature throughout and have occurred in all parts of the World. Besides economic strife and war, things are not always in the hands of Human (e.g. natural disasters). What Countries around the World need to do going forward is to have a basic level of economic self-reliance. Things like face mask, clothing, basic medical equipment, basic things like plastic cutlery, etc. should be made in all countries of the World and import of such items should be strictly forbidden. Only then can each Country have semblance of hope when disaster such as COVID-19 strikes. I don't know, maybe I am rambling but I feel all countries from Afghanistan to United States to South Sudan to Zimbabwe need to enabled and forced to produce necessities of life and such basic items instead of relying on China, Germany, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  We don't need hard and fast rules about supply chains, we need to include resiliency in more of our planning. That might lead to certain choices about supply chains, but the point is that it should be an outcome of thought and planning.
minikites 7y ago
The incentive structure of market capitalism is not aligned with the interests of society or the welfare of individuals.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
Modern supply chains are concentrated on pulling manufactured goods from far away where they can offload environmental costs on countries that don't care/are corrupt, wasting energy taking it halfway around the world, and then selling it in America. They also don't warehouse anything. Everything we depend on really is about 30 days supply tops, and the goal of supply chain management is to get as close to perfect demand anticipation as possible, which is as little warehoused goods as possible. So everything has a huge lead time. The "economics" of it (at least for the next foreseeable earnings quarter) was pretty cut and dry on paper. Of course that economics is just for the bank accounts of the rich, and the environmental costs, lack of "production security", and other concerns that couldn't be quantified easily (and thus are culturally ignored in economics) were ignored. What I find particularly galling is that we are on a solid fourth iteration of a possible pandemic that was reliant on ventilators and infection disease in general (SARS, MERS, H5N1, Covid-19), and the CDC and DOD should have had a turnkey plan to address covering shortfalls of critical medical equipment with whatever domestic manufacturing we have left. Of course Trump has allegedly fired a lot of the old-timers, but even if those people are gone, the basics of the plan should be around, but clearly that doesn't exist.
- basch 7y ago
  Environmental and labor. It's perplexed me how one can be pro union rights, pro globalization, pro human rights and not a nationalist, all at the same time. "Treating people fairly is important, we can't offer jobs that don't protect people. Encourage spending to be for foreign goods not blanked by those protections."
- mark-r 7y ago
  It doesn't matter if the plans still exist, if the people who know where to find them are gone.
CleanCoder 7y ago
Does everyone here have a NYTimes subscription or is there a way to read this article without one?
- bcraven 7y ago
  http://archive.vn/oUJ6Z http://archive.vn/oUJ6Z
- quickthrowman 7y ago
  I haven’t had any trouble reading NYT articles about coronavirus, I don’t think there’s a paywall. Otherwise, archive.is will give you a free copy
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  The NYT has lifted the paywall for all COVID-19 related articles. You need to log in or create a free account, but you don't need a subscription. Disabling JS also works.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  I got a login wall, but Safari's Reader Mode gave me the whole article without needing to create a login.
sidesquid 7y ago
Back in February I ordered a few boxes of 3M masks from a distributor in US because the US was the only country with no mask export laws yet.
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
  Nice foresight! Hopefully you have enough for you and yours and perhaps can donate to local institutions that could benefit too
  - sidesquid 7y ago
    I ended up using one box of the three cartons I ordered so I donated the rest to the churches and Hospitals!
chmod775 7y ago
> That’s where cheap, disposable face masks, eye protection, gloves and gowns come in. The world appears to have entirely forgotten that there are re-usable facemasks which you just boil/steam in hot water to sterilize. They were heavily used only a short time ago. You would just need to have 1-2 per medical worker and you'd be fine. The "disposable everything" attitude is coming to bite blind capitalism in the ass yet again.
crazygringo 7y ago
Unfortunately this article doesn't get at any actual "why". The author blames just-in-time supply chains, but for me the crucial part is: > In 2006, Congress approved funds to add protective gear to a national strategic stockpile — among other things, the stockpile collected 52 million surgical face masks and 104 million N95 respirator masks. But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them. This month, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, testified that there are only about 40 million masks in the stockpile — around 1 percent of the projected national need. Stockpiles are clearly the answer, since supply chains are always going to fail in certain scenarios. So the real questions here are, why didn't Congress create a bigger stockpile and why didn't it ensure it was maintained? I genuinely want an in-depth answer to this question. Is this some kind of problem with democratic government? Or are other democracies managinging responsible stockpiles just fine? Is it something unique to American politics? Do Americans somehow hold their representatives less accountable? Is it more the fault of one party over another? Is it leaving responsibilities to Congress that ought to be delegated to an agency? Is there are ideological or cultural component here, or just plain lack of accountability and people not doing their jobs? Seriously. It's important we have a real in-depth analysis on this. Not knee-jerk opiniated answers, but what actually happened.
- kingaillas 7y ago
  >why didn't Congress create a bigger stockpile and why didn't it ensure it was maintained? You'd have to interview the responsible people at the time, which I doubt is going to happen right now. But the obvious answer is "nobody thought it was worth the money to do that." >Is it leaving responsibilities to Congress that ought to be delegated to an agency? It is definitely not only this. Even if responsibility were delegated, Congress (House of Representatives) has to allocate the money and is also where tax legislation originates. So a responsible agency can still be starved of funds to actually operate. Heck that is true even for executive-funded agencies like the CFPB, which the administration has tried to kill through zero funding, multiple times. >Is there are ideological I think this is vast majority of the problem. One party, without naming it, is basically only about two things: 1) tax cuts as a policy solution for all problems, and 2) thoughts and prayers when anything bad happens (mass shootings, etc.) and minimal willingness to enact any changes to stop it from happening again. That same political party is jammed to the gills with an anti-science, anti-expert, anti-vaccine, anti-government, etc attitude and will likely continue failing to take steps to address incoming issues, until they are on our doorstep already manifesting problems -and at that time the cost of dealing with it will be far higher in lives and money than it could have been. Just look at the chief executive, who wants the country "reopened by easter" despite all advice from medical experts. The ideology here is: lets sacrifice millions of people on the altar of the free market.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nulldog22 7y ago
Richest country? What, by what metric?
- crazygringo 7y ago
  By GDP. I don't think there's any debate there.
  - nulldog22 7y ago
    It's 23 Trillion dollars in debt
    - exclusiv 7y ago
      Seems you have an agenda, but I'll help you out. "The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP)[a] as of Q1 2014." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Un...
jeffdavis 7y ago
Blaming capitalism seems weird. Capitalism is not the only economic system with just-in-time or globally-interdependent supply chains. And capitalism can't explain why our strategic government stockpiles were never replenished. There's a tendancy to compare the results of a system to what a wise, common-sense person with 20/20 hindsight would do if they were in charge. But that's not how things work. People in a system often fall victim to all kinds of bad assumptions, often thinking that others are wholly or partially responsible for dealing with a particular risk. It looks like the US was caught flat-footed. It's too early to say how resilient we are, though. And it's way too early to start trying to push specific political angles like the idea that some mythical-but-non-specific non-capitalist system would have served us better.
- jahaja 7y ago
  The relevant incentives are there because of capitalism. Just as the incentives to cover things up or shift blame were there in the USSR during Chernobyl.
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    Without a point of comparison this is meaningless. Do command economies have a "mask czar" that makes sure nobody runs out of masks? And does that, in general, work better?
    - jahaja 7y ago
      Why do you assume a command economy?
grecy 7y ago
The most important question is will the US learn from it's mistakes and actually improve it's preparedness and healthcare and public services, or will everything be re-built brick for brick in the same way the serves the rich and keeps the poor down?
jeffdavis 7y ago
The U.S. seems to have dropped the ball on testing. That's really the only mistake that seems likely to matter that anyone might have conceivably not made. Global supply chains are a fact of life. The strongest fighter against over-dependence on China is Trump, and he was ridiculed as "protectionist". Trump's travel restrictions were similarly ridiculed. Strategic stockpiles are spotty. Sometimes the thing you stockpile is what you need; often not. Did every other country have a stockpile of masks except the US?
- kingaillas 7y ago
  >That's really the only mistake that seems likely to matter that anyone might have conceivably not made. How about reacting 6-8 weeks earlier, rather than wasting so many weeks of warnings in denial mode, calling it a hoax by rival politicians, downplaying and lying the whole time? >Global supply chains are a fact of life. And that clearly needs to be rethought because the dependencies introduced can cause a global economic meltdown. As evidence I introduce: the current situation. >Strategic stockpiles are spotty. Doesn't matter since you can't run a country like you run a business. For one, when a business is trouble it throw out all free-market ideology and immediately cries for government for help. The government doesn't have that option. The US is willing to spend $700 billion a year on the military, yet this war is being fought by doctors, nurses, hospitals, grocery stores, delivery people, and truck drivers. Sounds to me like devoting, I don't know, 1% of the military budget for future pandemics (just lump that in under nuclear/biological/chemical threats) would be a wise move. Having $8 billion of PPE around would be extremely handy right now.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago
  This isn't about a comparison with other countries. It's about ways in which the US was unprepared. And yes, some other countries did have significant stockpiles of masks (compared to their annual use). Also, global supply chains are not "a fact of life". They are the result of a distinct, easily identifiable set of policies, regulations, laws and decisions made by the US government and corporations over a period of less than half of my life. They have occured because people with power decided that they wanted them.
- 7y ago
larrik 7y ago
It seems to me that the main reason we are running out is that doctors have a lot of patients and use a new mask each and every time they move to a new patient. I'm not sure that's all that helpful (but it definitely could be absolutely necessary), and it seems quite wasteful.
twomoretime 7y ago
I think at this point it's clear that the United States is also the most self-hating country in the world. Our media harps on the exact same pseudo-controversies that Russian trolls use as wedge issues, primarily because people online tend to swallow anything anti-american whole, particularly given the current state of politics. And this article starts strong with partisan fuckery. It blames Trump: >President Trump, bizarrely, has so far resisted ordering companies to produce more supplies and equipment It when the source is clicked it mentions Trump is resisting signing an executive order. Apparently people are upset that Trump isn't acting like a king. But the article takes its swipe and most people won't click the link. The problem is elsewhere in the article. Quite simply it's globalism. If we had local production we could ramp it up just in time. But people let their partisan idiocy get in the way of rational decision making and right now antiglobalism not with the range of socially acceptable discourse... But don't worry, Coronavirus is about to push the political pendulum right.
chewz 7y ago
It is Chernobyl of capitalism.. Sure.
notlukesky 7y ago
Allocation of resources is always a political decision. There are multiple things governments all over the world stockpile in ranging from weapons, oil, maple syrup and even medical equipment. The electorate votes them in. Clearly the priorities of the electorate can change over crisis and a new set of values can be ushered in or forgotten quickly. My favorite is when the French health minister Roselyne Bachelot sold stockpiled medical supplies in France in 2010 and there was no political cost to it from the electorate: https://www.france24.com/en/20100103-france-sell-off-millions-surplus-flu-shots https://www.france24.com/en/20100103-france-sell-off-million...
Simulacra 7y ago
All this article highlights is that when you don't order more, you run out. This is not political, it's simply a mismanagement of inventory, and not being prepared for a disaster where multitudes of an item will be needed.
RickJWagner 7y ago
I read a Facebook post this week that I hope is true. A nurse was complaining that respirator maintenance meant periodic visits to each room, which required a new mask as each room was entered. The nurse suggested to management that the respirator tubes be lengthened, allowing the machines to be put in the hallway. Then each maintenance cycle required only one mask! Not sure if it was true, but even if it wasn't it showed good thinking.
- leereeves 7y ago
  Would that work? A longer tube would mean a lot more air needs to be moved to raise and lower the pressure.

90 points by ardy42 7y ago

I thought this was about Switzerland... Just an opinion on a country that usually is ahead of others in smart decisions - they have almost 0 medical manufacturing here, and in past weeks were/are progressively getting screwed by ie Germany stopping trucks full of face masks and medical equipment at the border and forbidding them to come here. Outsourcing is not an issue only in US. Also, people in government responsible for raising alerts, closures etc. voted 2:1 to not do quarantine when Italy was already exploding with cases (mind you, regions super close to Suisse!). Why? Effin' economical concerns, meaning businesses stronghanding (probably corrupt) politicians to keep things running. So while people were already dying en masse 50km south from here, all the shops, restaurants and caffees were chock full of common folks were acting like nothing is going on. Somebody didn't realize that it will take much longer to get economy back afterwards... Hospitals desperately unprepared with equipment. Doctors working with plain stupid paper/cloth masks on emergencies, not having them swapped often. Leaving schools open for way too long. I could go on... I expected more from this country. I really did. Quick removal of any workers protection laws for doctors. I personally know few doctors that are already sick with Covid here, mainly because system fucked them hard with lack of equipment, and they are properly disappointed, desperate and furious. So don't be harsh on US government, I think basically almost all governments screwed up badly.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
This is the part that annoys me. Most people would agree that this particular virus presents a threat that should be addressed in a way that bypassed day to day considerations. But that is not the case. In US, the president openly says if it hurts economy too bad, we might as well roll the dice and see what happens. Very annoying given that the advice is likely coming from people who can cloister themselves if needed. Why does everything has to be calculated in terms of the dollar? Hell, a month ago poster here was advocating killong off bat a species to save 2T in imaginary assets. It feels like I am going on a rant here, so I apologize. The past few days have been bananas.
- m23khan 7y ago
  hang in there friend, we are all in this Together.
Rochus 7y ago
> they have almost 0 medical manufacturing here Well, that must be a very big zero. Have you ever heard of companies like Roche, Tecan, Hamilton or Ypsomed (just to name a few)?
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Yeah, do your due diligence. All there is here are HQs with upper management, just enough to tax corporations here, and often some research. Manufacturing - almost zero, zilch, none. And if there is something, it can't manufacture anything without all parts supplied from outside (cheaper) countries. Of-topic a bit, but you know that 'swiss' army knives (victorinox, wenger) are manufactured piece by piece in Germany/Austria, and only final assembly is done en Suisse? Just enough work to pass the criteria to get the stamp 'swiss made', not a nanometer more. I understand it from cold corporate logic, it really minimizes the costs and they ask for premium price nevertheless due to that swiss tag. But as we see now, this approach hits the wall hard in certain, very real scenarios. At least they kept the milk industry with long term subsidies afloat. Go talk to Swiss doctors if you care, ideally in cantonal hospitals that will take most of the sick. Most of our friends are doctors in the biggest one in whole country, quite a few in emergencies. You will hear stories... None of the stuff I mention is in mainstream media, all act like all is under control from day 0. Talk about independent journalism.
  - Rochus 7y ago
    Well, I am Swiss and I consult some of the mentioned companies. These companies do most of their F&E in Switzerland and also some manufacturing. It's in no way just management. And Victorinox does manufacturing in Ibach and it's one of the most popular employers in Europe.
PeterStuer 7y ago
All screw up, but some screw up more persistently then others. What it clearly demoinstrates is that our socio-economic systems of choice clearly do not incentivize providing proper care for the people it is meant to serve. Some still act as if this was an unforeseen event. All of this was predicted years ago after the previous SARS outbreak and well documented by the scientific community, yet governments worldwide turned a blind eye. My own 'health' minister even went as far as destroying the strategic stockpile of FFP2 masks (yes, actually destroyed as they went over their 'best used before' , not that that turns them useless overnight) then aggressively 'saved' on all social and healthcare programs and decided not to refill the strategic stockpile. Her latest blunder: panic ordering a contingent of masks from some dodgy north-African dealer without doing any due diligence, and of course in the process not only getting conned out of 3.5 million euros, but having hospital staff waiting another week on adequate protection. It boggles the mind.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Maybe I didn't express myself properly at the end - I meant be pissed off, I sure as hell am, but these massive failures that will cost many lives can be found everywhere. I really did expect more, not strictly from politicians (they should just listen when SHTF), but many 'experts' with influential roles in government. In strictly just society, those with powers for this situation should be judged afterwards for their effectiveness, or lack of it. I wonder if we will see this in some form somewhere

cryoshon 7y ago

framing the US as the world's "richest country" is a disservice here. a few people are very rich, and many people are well off. but the institutions of this country are, despite being the product of the "richest country", entirely poor and weak. public institutions have been hollowed out by decades of intentional neglect and austerity. the CDC has no help to offer hospitals in need and is still like a deer in headlights, months into the crisis. before their weakness was exposed, the national stockpile was mostly empty. the cracks in the system were never filled, and many were barely papered over. private institutions have been optimized to extract profits rather than to serve their stated social purpose. hospitals are now on the brink of going out of business and closing down as the pandemic starts to ramp up. their readiness was low beforehand, too, as there's no money to be made in being prepared for a public health emergency. so, how did the world's richest country run out of face masks? easy: we organized our society around the idea that buying them and keeping them around was too expensive to bother with.

danans 7y ago
I've been thinking along the same lines, that our lack of public preparedness for this is reflected in concentration of returns to capital at the top of the wealth distribution. But that said, there are things the US stockpiles: corn, petroleum, and weapons.
- quietthrow 7y ago
  We over index on preparedness for war. Bill gates has a great ted talk on this who basically called this corona virus situation a few years ago. https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re... When I look at the whole situation it looks like a bunch of meatheads whose answer to everything is brawn and military superiority.
  - throwaway32120 7y ago
    And like most things in America, the military costs much more than other countries and does much less for its citizens. A good example is what happened when Yemen fell apart: China used its military to evacuate Chinese citizens[1], India used its military to evacuate its citizens[2], and the US told its citizens that they were on their own[3]. The American embassy even told Americans trapped in Yemen that they should seek out the help of India in order to get out of the country[4]. It's hard to escape the notion that for decades America has suffered under a political class that's been a mix of incompetent, self-serving, and uncaring. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32173811 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32173811 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raahat [3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/21/washington-to-americans-stuck-in-yemen-youre-on-your-own-evacuation/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/21/washington-to-americans... [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/08/india-leads-rescue-of-foreign-nationals-including-americans-trapped-in-yemen/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/08...

watertom 7y ago

All this article highlights is that you can't run the government as a business. The GOP has convinced their voters that running the government as a business is a great idea, it's not. The GOP have convinced scared white, Christian, racist, xenophobic people that all the government does is waste their hard earned money paying benefits to poor, non-working, non-white, non-Christian, non-citizen, LGBTQ's. I ran Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for a very large Financial Institution. I would say we were world class in our preparedness, but there is NO WAY that a business could be prepared for a real disaster. I had to fight tooth and nail for every penny I got, and every time I heard the same line from all the board members, "This is a waste of resources, for something that will probably never happen in our lifetime, if ever." A Business can't stockpile, cash, products, buildings, capacity, extra remote employees, etc. in order to sustain an event lasting 6-12 months, that MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN. Yes, we all knew this could happen, but there was no way to predict when it would happen. Only a government can and should be preparing for really bad things that might never happen. Frankly running DR & BC wrecked my career at that firm because I was seen as Don Quixote, "Tilting at Windmills." I was assigned the job and did my best, assuming it was a stepping stone, and it was, but they expected me to just put on a show. Instead I took the job seriously, and it eroded their confidence in me, they expected that I should have recognized it as a fluff job, used only to get me exposure to the BOD, justifying the next step up in my career, instead I was "sent down" and had no choice but to leave.

fma 7y ago
Agreed. Was thinking how our Internet infrastructure has built in redundancy, chaos monkey for services, etc... Engineers understand that things can and will fail. If we build the Internet like the "just in time" supply chain - we'd all be screwed. What's also sad is that people could see in January that this would be a global issue. Domestic production should have ramped up - at least buy us more time, translating to more flattening of the curve, less deaths...
- watertom 7y ago
  It's even bigger than that. We should be looking at strategic sourcing, just like we do with oil. Not all manufacturing should be allowed offshore. The SEC evaluates mergers, as part of HomeLand Security we need offshoring evaluated. If you want to move your rubber dog bone production offshore, or if an industry wants to move ALL rubber dog bone production offshore, go for it. Critical items like ventilators. NOPE. Or Computing equipment, NOPE. There needs to be a list.

m23khan 7y ago

If you look at entire known Human history, pandemics, epidemics, wars, famines, droughts and troubled economic times feature throughout and have occurred in all parts of the World. Besides economic strife and war, things are not always in the hands of Human (e.g. natural disasters). What Countries around the World need to do going forward is to have a basic level of economic self-reliance. Things like face mask, clothing, basic medical equipment, basic things like plastic cutlery, etc. should be made in all countries of the World and import of such items should be strictly forbidden. Only then can each Country have semblance of hope when disaster such as COVID-19 strikes. I don't know, maybe I am rambling but I feel all countries from Afghanistan to United States to South Sudan to Zimbabwe need to enabled and forced to produce necessities of life and such basic items instead of relying on China, Germany, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

maxerickson 7y ago
We don't need hard and fast rules about supply chains, we need to include resiliency in more of our planning. That might lead to certain choices about supply chains, but the point is that it should be an outcome of thought and planning.

minikites 7y ago

The incentive structure of market capitalism is not aligned with the interests of society or the welfare of individuals.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

Modern supply chains are concentrated on pulling manufactured goods from far away where they can offload environmental costs on countries that don't care/are corrupt, wasting energy taking it halfway around the world, and then selling it in America. They also don't warehouse anything. Everything we depend on really is about 30 days supply tops, and the goal of supply chain management is to get as close to perfect demand anticipation as possible, which is as little warehoused goods as possible. So everything has a huge lead time. The "economics" of it (at least for the next foreseeable earnings quarter) was pretty cut and dry on paper. Of course that economics is just for the bank accounts of the rich, and the environmental costs, lack of "production security", and other concerns that couldn't be quantified easily (and thus are culturally ignored in economics) were ignored. What I find particularly galling is that we are on a solid fourth iteration of a possible pandemic that was reliant on ventilators and infection disease in general (SARS, MERS, H5N1, Covid-19), and the CDC and DOD should have had a turnkey plan to address covering shortfalls of critical medical equipment with whatever domestic manufacturing we have left. Of course Trump has allegedly fired a lot of the old-timers, but even if those people are gone, the basics of the plan should be around, but clearly that doesn't exist.

basch 7y ago
Environmental and labor. It's perplexed me how one can be pro union rights, pro globalization, pro human rights and not a nationalist, all at the same time. "Treating people fairly is important, we can't offer jobs that don't protect people. Encourage spending to be for foreign goods not blanked by those protections."
mark-r 7y ago
It doesn't matter if the plans still exist, if the people who know where to find them are gone.

CleanCoder 7y ago

Does everyone here have a NYTimes subscription or is there a way to read this article without one?

bcraven 7y ago
http://archive.vn/oUJ6Z http://archive.vn/oUJ6Z
quickthrowman 7y ago
I haven’t had any trouble reading NYT articles about coronavirus, I don’t think there’s a paywall. Otherwise, archive.is will give you a free copy
ceejayoz 7y ago
The NYT has lifted the paywall for all COVID-19 related articles. You need to log in or create a free account, but you don't need a subscription. Disabling JS also works.
kalleboo 7y ago
I got a login wall, but Safari's Reader Mode gave me the whole article without needing to create a login.

sidesquid 7y ago

Back in February I ordered a few boxes of 3M masks from a distributor in US because the US was the only country with no mask export laws yet.

Infinitesimus 7y ago
Nice foresight! Hopefully you have enough for you and yours and perhaps can donate to local institutions that could benefit too
- sidesquid 7y ago
  I ended up using one box of the three cartons I ordered so I donated the rest to the churches and Hospitals!

chmod775 7y ago

> That’s where cheap, disposable face masks, eye protection, gloves and gowns come in. The world appears to have entirely forgotten that there are re-usable facemasks which you just boil/steam in hot water to sterilize. They were heavily used only a short time ago. You would just need to have 1-2 per medical worker and you'd be fine. The "disposable everything" attitude is coming to bite blind capitalism in the ass yet again.

crazygringo 7y ago

Unfortunately this article doesn't get at any actual "why". The author blames just-in-time supply chains, but for me the crucial part is: > In 2006, Congress approved funds to add protective gear to a national strategic stockpile — among other things, the stockpile collected 52 million surgical face masks and 104 million N95 respirator masks. But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them. This month, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, testified that there are only about 40 million masks in the stockpile — around 1 percent of the projected national need. Stockpiles are clearly the answer, since supply chains are always going to fail in certain scenarios. So the real questions here are, why didn't Congress create a bigger stockpile and why didn't it ensure it was maintained? I genuinely want an in-depth answer to this question. Is this some kind of problem with democratic government? Or are other democracies managinging responsible stockpiles just fine? Is it something unique to American politics? Do Americans somehow hold their representatives less accountable? Is it more the fault of one party over another? Is it leaving responsibilities to Congress that ought to be delegated to an agency? Is there are ideological or cultural component here, or just plain lack of accountability and people not doing their jobs? Seriously. It's important we have a real in-depth analysis on this. Not knee-jerk opiniated answers, but what actually happened.

kingaillas 7y ago
>why didn't Congress create a bigger stockpile and why didn't it ensure it was maintained? You'd have to interview the responsible people at the time, which I doubt is going to happen right now. But the obvious answer is "nobody thought it was worth the money to do that." >Is it leaving responsibilities to Congress that ought to be delegated to an agency? It is definitely not only this. Even if responsibility were delegated, Congress (House of Representatives) has to allocate the money and is also where tax legislation originates. So a responsible agency can still be starved of funds to actually operate. Heck that is true even for executive-funded agencies like the CFPB, which the administration has tried to kill through zero funding, multiple times. >Is there are ideological I think this is vast majority of the problem. One party, without naming it, is basically only about two things: 1) tax cuts as a policy solution for all problems, and 2) thoughts and prayers when anything bad happens (mass shootings, etc.) and minimal willingness to enact any changes to stop it from happening again. That same political party is jammed to the gills with an anti-science, anti-expert, anti-vaccine, anti-government, etc attitude and will likely continue failing to take steps to address incoming issues, until they are on our doorstep already manifesting problems -and at that time the cost of dealing with it will be far higher in lives and money than it could have been. Just look at the chief executive, who wants the country "reopened by easter" despite all advice from medical experts. The ideology here is: lets sacrifice millions of people on the altar of the free market.

deleted 7y ago

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nulldog22 7y ago

Richest country? What, by what metric?

crazygringo 7y ago
By GDP. I don't think there's any debate there.
- nulldog22 7y ago
  It's 23 Trillion dollars in debt
  - exclusiv 7y ago
    Seems you have an agenda, but I'll help you out. "The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP)[a] as of Q1 2014." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Un...

jeffdavis 7y ago

Blaming capitalism seems weird. Capitalism is not the only economic system with just-in-time or globally-interdependent supply chains. And capitalism can't explain why our strategic government stockpiles were never replenished. There's a tendancy to compare the results of a system to what a wise, common-sense person with 20/20 hindsight would do if they were in charge. But that's not how things work. People in a system often fall victim to all kinds of bad assumptions, often thinking that others are wholly or partially responsible for dealing with a particular risk. It looks like the US was caught flat-footed. It's too early to say how resilient we are, though. And it's way too early to start trying to push specific political angles like the idea that some mythical-but-non-specific non-capitalist system would have served us better.

jahaja 7y ago
The relevant incentives are there because of capitalism. Just as the incentives to cover things up or shift blame were there in the USSR during Chernobyl.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  Without a point of comparison this is meaningless. Do command economies have a "mask czar" that makes sure nobody runs out of masks? And does that, in general, work better?
  - jahaja 7y ago
    Why do you assume a command economy?

grecy 7y ago

The most important question is will the US learn from it's mistakes and actually improve it's preparedness and healthcare and public services, or will everything be re-built brick for brick in the same way the serves the rich and keeps the poor down?

jeffdavis 7y ago

The U.S. seems to have dropped the ball on testing. That's really the only mistake that seems likely to matter that anyone might have conceivably not made. Global supply chains are a fact of life. The strongest fighter against over-dependence on China is Trump, and he was ridiculed as "protectionist". Trump's travel restrictions were similarly ridiculed. Strategic stockpiles are spotty. Sometimes the thing you stockpile is what you need; often not. Did every other country have a stockpile of masks except the US?

kingaillas 7y ago
>That's really the only mistake that seems likely to matter that anyone might have conceivably not made. How about reacting 6-8 weeks earlier, rather than wasting so many weeks of warnings in denial mode, calling it a hoax by rival politicians, downplaying and lying the whole time? >Global supply chains are a fact of life. And that clearly needs to be rethought because the dependencies introduced can cause a global economic meltdown. As evidence I introduce: the current situation. >Strategic stockpiles are spotty. Doesn't matter since you can't run a country like you run a business. For one, when a business is trouble it throw out all free-market ideology and immediately cries for government for help. The government doesn't have that option. The US is willing to spend $700 billion a year on the military, yet this war is being fought by doctors, nurses, hospitals, grocery stores, delivery people, and truck drivers. Sounds to me like devoting, I don't know, 1% of the military budget for future pandemics (just lump that in under nuclear/biological/chemical threats) would be a wise move. Having $8 billion of PPE around would be extremely handy right now.
PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago
This isn't about a comparison with other countries. It's about ways in which the US was unprepared. And yes, some other countries did have significant stockpiles of masks (compared to their annual use). Also, global supply chains are not "a fact of life". They are the result of a distinct, easily identifiable set of policies, regulations, laws and decisions made by the US government and corporations over a period of less than half of my life. They have occured because people with power decided that they wanted them.
7y ago

larrik 7y ago

It seems to me that the main reason we are running out is that doctors have a lot of patients and use a new mask each and every time they move to a new patient. I'm not sure that's all that helpful (but it definitely could be absolutely necessary), and it seems quite wasteful.

twomoretime 7y ago

I think at this point it's clear that the United States is also the most self-hating country in the world. Our media harps on the exact same pseudo-controversies that Russian trolls use as wedge issues, primarily because people online tend to swallow anything anti-american whole, particularly given the current state of politics. And this article starts strong with partisan fuckery. It blames Trump: >President Trump, bizarrely, has so far resisted ordering companies to produce more supplies and equipment It when the source is clicked it mentions Trump is resisting signing an executive order. Apparently people are upset that Trump isn't acting like a king. But the article takes its swipe and most people won't click the link. The problem is elsewhere in the article. Quite simply it's globalism. If we had local production we could ramp it up just in time. But people let their partisan idiocy get in the way of rational decision making and right now antiglobalism not with the range of socially acceptable discourse... But don't worry, Coronavirus is about to push the political pendulum right.

chewz 7y ago

It is Chernobyl of capitalism.. Sure.

notlukesky 7y ago

Allocation of resources is always a political decision. There are multiple things governments all over the world stockpile in ranging from weapons, oil, maple syrup and even medical equipment. The electorate votes them in. Clearly the priorities of the electorate can change over crisis and a new set of values can be ushered in or forgotten quickly. My favorite is when the French health minister Roselyne Bachelot sold stockpiled medical supplies in France in 2010 and there was no political cost to it from the electorate: https://www.france24.com/en/20100103-france-sell-off-millions-surplus-flu-shots https://www.france24.com/en/20100103-france-sell-off-million...

Simulacra 7y ago

All this article highlights is that when you don't order more, you run out. This is not political, it's simply a mismanagement of inventory, and not being prepared for a disaster where multitudes of an item will be needed.

RickJWagner 7y ago

I read a Facebook post this week that I hope is true. A nurse was complaining that respirator maintenance meant periodic visits to each room, which required a new mask as each room was entered. The nurse suggested to management that the respirator tubes be lengthened, allowing the machines to be put in the hallway. Then each maintenance cycle required only one mask! Not sure if it was true, but even if it wasn't it showed good thinking.

leereeves 7y ago
Would that work? A longer tube would mean a lot more air needs to be moved to raise and lower the pressure.